


Before The Light

by Meduseld



Category: DCU, DCU (Comics), Green Arrow - All Media Types, Green Lantern - All Media Types
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, M/M, Road Trips, Sharing a Room, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Wet Dream, this is exactly what you think it is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-15
Updated: 2018-07-15
Packaged: 2019-06-11 03:37:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,521
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15306636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Meduseld/pseuds/Meduseld
Summary: Oliver can’t sleep. Hal can.





	Before The Light

August in Georgia is exactly as hot and humid as Oliver imagined it, if he’d imagined it being about a thousand times worse.

It’s like how you can’t actually remember pain, because you can only really feel it when it’s happening. He’s awake in the dead of night, air conditioning in their shitty little motel room working at its modest full blast, with a clanking hum that competes with the screaming buzz of insects outside.

Hal, the absolute shithead, is fast asleep in the bed next to him, stretched out like a bronzed dream.

The first night, the one Oliver had spent feeling like he was drowning on land under a blanket of air so heavy it felt like a living thing, had been the worst. When he’d managed to roll his neck, the skin sticky and stiff, hoping to see Hal as miserable as he was all he’d found was his even, sleeping face.

Oliver had been so angry he’d chucked one of his pillows across the narrow gap separating their beds to hit him square in the chest. Hal’s eyes had only slit open far enough to register that it was Oliver before whispering a sleepy “dude what the fuck”, rolling over and going right back to sleep.

He hadn’t even mentioned it in the morning despite, or maybe because of, the fact that Oliver was so grouchy he was clearly itching for a fight.

It was a military thing, Hal’s ability to fall asleep anywhere, instantly, no matter how awkward the conditions. Like everything else that Uncle Sam had given him, it filled Oliver with an uneasy mix of admiration and queasiness.

The first time he’d noticed it, at the beginning of their little road trip, about three months back, they’d been on the turnpike driving away from Stockbridge. The Berkshires were in the rearview, the wind rolling off them keeping an unseasonable winter chill in the air.

Hal had been folded in half in the passenger’s seat, breathing steady even though his head was knocking against the glass.

Part of Oliver had wanted to wake him, to curl his hand around that tan neck and pull it straight. The part of him that wanted to let him sleep, instead, won out.

It hadn’t mattered much.

The minute Oliver had pulled into the next gas station, his eyes had snapped open like he’d heard Reveille. He was out the door before Oliver had even fully rolled to a stop. They hadn’t talked about that either, they’d just bought twinkies and energy drinks and when they’d gone back to the truck Hal had slid in behind the wheel.

Tonight, three days into an arms smuggling case, Oliver can’t sleep and Hal can.

Night time had quickly become the hardest thing about their roadtrip to nowhere, burying into his thoughts and secrets, making him feel like the only man alive on Earth. And now he’s alone in the dark with himself and the ugliest parts of summer.

The worst thing about the impossible humid heat is that it robs him of his ability to _do_ anything about it.

He’s just drifting in it, drowning, thoughts turned to soup.

That’s what he’s thinking, stuck in a haze, when he registers the sound. It’s not a whimper, exactly, but sharp and in the back of throat enough to sear right into the animal part of his brain.

“Hal?” he tries to whisper but can’t, tongue heavy in his mouth, so he settles for turning his head, wincing at the way it feels like his skin is wet and coming apart like soaked paper.

Hal is asleep.

And it’s a good dream.

Even in the dim light, filtering in through too thin blinds, Oliver can see the way he’s straining against his boxers, the tent obscene and enticing.

There must be a wet patch, spreading, and it sends a painful bolt through him, a twisted feeling of both arousal and disgust. It’s too goddamn hot for that.

But then maybe that’s it, the heat so alive that it's practically breathing, practically licking their skin. Maybe in his sleeping head that’s exactly what it has become, a living body pressed against Hal’s and _writhing._

His hips are making little aborted motions, stretched tight against the hard angles of the bones. His heels are digging into the mattress, just as stubborn as his nipples, from the way they’re peaking sharply on the long flat planes on his chest.

But that’s not the part that guts Oliver, reaching into his chest like a hand clenching around his heart.

It’s Hal’s face, blushing and soft, lips open and inviting, hair tossed artfully.

Then he makes that sound again and his hips cant and Oliver is instantly, impossibly hard.

Hal jerks his head, profile slipping into sharp relief, more beautiful than any of the works of the old masters that Oliver had never appreciated when he was teenaged and hungover and dragged to a dozen of fine art museums all over Europe.

His heart is racing and lurching.

He should look away. He _has_ to look away. He _can’t_ , anymore than he can sleep in the thick summer heat that Hal is rocking into like a lover.

Oliver is turning over before he’s really conscious of it, body flipping over like a stone kicked sharply.

Hal’s body shakes like a _yes_ , rippling through them both, Oliver’s hips starting to dig into his own mattress.

He has to do _something_ , his brain and better nature insists, to look away at least, better late than never but still he can’t.

All he can do is hold his breath and try to swallow through a throat drier than desert dust as Hal moves his body in time with the oldest rhythm ever known, making love to a phantom.

Time slows to viscous fluid and Oliver knows he’ll remember this night the rest of his life, the searing snapshots of Hal’s hips, the toss of his head and the way that framed his lips, the arch of his back and then, _finally,_ the sound he makes when he comes, lit by the moon, neon and the sodium glow of street lamps filtering in through the shitty blinds.

For a moment, everything is totally still.

And then Hal wakes up.

Oliver’s eyes slam shut and his pulse rockets, the way it did when he was a boy and snuck cigarettes from his mother’s purse, terrified he’d get caught.

Instead he’s hyper aware of the way Hal groans and sighs, moving up and away from the sound of his feet on the floor.

He can practically see Hal make his way to the tiny bathroom and nearly jumps at the wet _thwack_ of what must be his ruined boxers hitting the shower tile.

Hal always showers first, awake with the dawn, the way he can’t help doing since Basic Training from what he says. He must be planning to wash them in the morning.

Ollie’s eyes slit open on their own and he can almost make out Hal’s silhouette, statue still just the open doorway.

The groan of release that follows is almost more obscene than the noise Hal made when he came, paired with the unmistakable sound of a stream hitting the still water of the toilet bowl.

It must be so _hot_ , coming from his body like that, a stray devil of a thought in Oliver’s head says and the muscles of his back dance with it.

He feels too big for his skin, bursting at the seams.

The slap of Hal’s bare feet on the floor snaps him out of it, makes him realize his eyes had slipped back shut and his hips had started to rock.

He freezes but Hal must not notice, pausing by their open duffel bags. He hesitates and Oliver can almost hear his thoughts: _Fuck it_. He doesn’t get another pair of underwear, just drops back down on his bed like a stone.

This time he manages to resist taking a look.

Hal breathes a long whistling sigh and just like that he’s asleep.

Oliver stays where he is, every muscle locked tight and heart tripping guiltily in his chest and pulsing between his legs where he’s still, impossibly, harder than he’s ever been.

He could do something about that, maybe, but he can’t with Hal in the next bed. It feels worse than everything he’s done so far.

He can’t get his hips to rock or his hand to move and the thought of slinking off to the bathroom, looming over the bowl and jerking himself down, the two of them mingling like that sends another painful, tortured throb of arousal between his legs.

Oliver doesn’t get up.

He doesn’t move at all.

He feels like he blinks, but when his eyes open again the room’s dingy glory is ringed in the cold grey light of dawn and Hal’s golden skin flashes in the corner of his eye as he closes the bathroom door behind him.

The water splashes down behind the flimsy plywood and Oliver breathes, relieved to feel a lull in the heat.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from _[In The Still Of The Night](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBT3oDMCWpI)_ which was the working title for this fic, and the fic itself references these (thematically appropriate) songs: _[Sweet Baby James](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lok-ELdJyO0)_ and _[Cold Grey Light Of Dawn](https://youtu.be/FrHY2Jbxd7E)_.


End file.
